AHA files brief supporting subsidies in federal-facilitated exchanges

AHA NewsFeb 21, 2014

The AHA Feb. 18 urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to uphold a district court ruling that rejected a legal challenge to premium subsidies for lower income Americans in states that do not set up their own health insurance exchanges.

“In short, the [Affordable Care Act] will not work without subsidies, and Congress knew it,” the AHA said in a friend-ofthe- court brief. “Yet plaintiffs insist that Congress designed the ACA so that tens of millions of Americans, in more than half the states, would be walled off from subsidies altogether.”

The AHA said the court should reject that interpretation. “It would be devastating to the ACA and to that statute’s key goals,” the association stated. “It would be equally devastating to America’s hospitals…. And, critically, it bears no resemblance to what Congress intended.”